THE House of Representatives’ 11-man prosecution panel in the impending impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte intends to ask the Senate impeachment court to hold pre-trial proceedings, pending submission of a certification that the House in the current 20th Congress intends to pursue the case.
Manila Rep. Joel Chua, a member of the prosecution team, said the Senate, acting as an impeachment court, can hold pre-trial proceedings even if the House has yet to issue the certification.
“Maybe in the next few days, we will study what motion we’re going to submit to the impeachment court,” Chua told reporters. “For now, what we are considering is to file a motion to proceed with the pre-trial.”
In the pre-trial, Chua said, evidence will be marked and witnesses will be identified as well as the purpose of their testimonies “to prevent surprises during the trial.”
The House has complied with the impeachment court’s first order for the House, under the previous 19th Congress, to issue a certification that it did not violate the constitutional one-year ban on the filing of more than one impeachment complaint within the same year. It has yet to comply with the other order — for the House to issue a certification that the 20th Congress, which opened on June 30, still intends to pursue the case.
The prosecution earlier raised the need for the court to clarify its second order, saying it is impossible to comply with it when the 20th Congress has yet to be convened since session is yet to open on July 28.
The impeachment court’s requirement was part of its order last month to remand the Articles of Impeachment to the House, right before the 19th Congress adjourned session sine die.
Chua said that while the prosecution panel is studying what actions to take, its members are satisfied with the court’s recent actions requiring Duterte to answer the impeachment articles, an order which her defense team has complied with by filing an answer ad cautelam (with caution).
‘TRAP’
On Tuesday night, Rep. Jose Manuel “Chel” Diokno, who is also a member of the prosecution, said the second order “could be a trap” for the prosecution, which earlier said the court’s remand order was unconstitutional.
Diokno said that once the House complies with the second order, the impeachment court may say that it is an admission of violation of the one-year ban.
“This is something that has to be studied thoroughly because it could be a trap. If the House does this, they might say, ‘Hey, you violated the one-year ban,” he told reporters in Filipino.
Duterte, in her answer ad cautelam, formally asked the court to dismiss the impeachment articles based on three main grounds: supposed violation of the one-year bar rule; the alleged absence of valid Articles of Impeachment before the court; and procedural defects citing Senate Rule No. 1013.
While the defense stated that the Constitution “explicitly prohibits the initiation of more than one impeachment proceeding against the same official within a period of one year,” it did not cite a standing Supreme Court ruling which states that what is prohibited by the Constitution is the initiation of more than one impeachment proceeding within the period of one year.
Originally, there were four impeachment complaints filed against Duterte but only one proceeding was initiated after the House endorsed the fourth complaint filed by its leaders last February and archived the three others.
The prosecution has said initiation happens when the complaint is endorsed to the House Committee on Justice and it did not happen to the first three impeachment complaints filed against Duterte by civil society groups.
Prosecution spokesman Antonio Bucoy has said that since the current impeachment complaint was directly endorsed by more than one-third of House members, the need for a referral to the House Committee on Justice was already eliminated as allowed by the Constitution, which made the complaint “the Articles of Impeachment itself.”
‘PROCEDURAL LEGITIMACY’
Impeachment court spokesperson Reginal Tongol, in a press conference yesterday, said the two orders should not be seen as “traps.”
“The specific certifications being required from the House are all part of the effort to guarantee procedural legitimacy and to uphold constitutional standard. This certification procedure should not be seen as traps and measures to impede. But these certification process help prevent any legal impediment or challenges or technicalities that could undermine the impeachment process once it starts rolling, and to uphold the proceeding’s integrity,” he said.
Tongol also said the impeachment court is proceeding “accordingly with the transparent, fair, and legally sound process” in the impeachment case .
“So, the disrespect for or attempts to undermine the impeachment process threaten the independence and credibility of the court and jeopardizes public trust on the process itself,” he said.
“We therefore encourage the pubic and all involved parties to participate constructively and respectfully without insinuating any malice on the court,” he added.
TECHNICALITIES
Rep. Jude Acidre (PL, Tingog) said technicalities should not drown out the Articles of Impeachment against the Vice President.
“We hope our desire to shed light on the Vice President’s accountability would not be drowned in technicalities because there’s only one way to answer the call for accountability, it’s through a trial),” he told a press conference in Filipino.
He raised concerns over the court’s procedural requirements, particularly the second order, saying it could have been properly raised during trial proceedings and not before it.
“That’s what we’re trying to avoid, for senator-judges to appear they are lawyering for the Vice President,” he said. “It could have been raised better in the course of the trial.”
The serious allegations such as Duterte’s misuse of confidential funds and her alleged threats to kill the President, the First Lady and the Speaker Martin Romualdez cannot be set aside through mere technicalities, Acidre said.
“Just a reminder for everybody involved in the process that the end point of an impeachment is to exact accountability and not provide an opportunity for others to escape from it,” he said.
NEW SENATORS
Tongol said Senate President Francis Escudero decided to withhold the oathtaking of the new 12 senators as impeachment judges, and let the Senate president of the 20th Congress do it as a “matter of prudence and diligence.”
“As you know, if one Congress adjourns and another begins, the Senate president is going to be elected or re-elected. So, we will just have to wait who will be that Senate president who will lead the oathtaking. The presiding officer would not want the process to be questioned since it may have legal impediments,” he said in mixed Filipino and English.
“For his actions not to be questioned, due diligence and prudence require the presiding officer not to anymore overstep so that his actions will not be questioned,” he added
Sen. Risa Hontiveros earlier asked Escudero to swear in the new senators anytime between June 30 and July 28 so that the trial proper will proceed smoothly.
Tongol said there are “schools of thought” that the oathtaking can be done at any given time since the impeachment court is a continuing body, while there is another thought that the court is not a continuing body, thus Escudero would rather “err on the side of caution.”
He said the earliest that the new senators can take their oath would be on July 29, a day after the “ceremonial opening” when, he said, senator-judges and congressmen will be busy.
Besides, he said, the House will still have to elect its prosecutors because the previous ones now have expired authorization after the 19th Congress officially ended on June 30.
“So there needs to be another authorization from the 20th Congress of the new set of House prosecutors,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Archdiocese of Manila said it will hold a forum on the impeachment process on July 26.
The forum to be held at the Arzobispado de Manila in Intramuros, Manila will be organized by the Ministry on Socio-Political Advocacy headed by Fr. Enrico Martin F. Adoviso. Invited are parish priests and chaplains in the archdiocese.
Former 1987 Constitutional Commission member and former Commission on Elections Commissioner Rene Sarmiento is set to serve as the resource person. – With Raymond Africa and Gerard Naval
